Acupuncture, when integrated with Western medicine during the early phase of peripheral facial paralysis, improves clinical response rates and accelerates facial function recovery.
This work conducted a systematic review of eight databases, fishing out significant literature from inception till date. The inclusion criteria zeroed in on randomized controlled trials, which certified the effectiveness of acupuncture in acute and non-acute phases of peripheral facial paralysis. The outcomes of this in-depth investigation boiled down to factors such as clinical effectiveness, facial nerve function rates, cure time, and non-cure rates at 1-month follow-up. The methodological quality and certainty of evidence were gauged using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool and the GRADE framework. Subsequent data analysis leveraged Review Manager and Stata softwares and the results eschewed numerical probabilities or statistics for a more comprehensive understanding.
In the pool of 15 randomized controlled trials taken into account, most showed a low risk of bias. It emerged that adjunctive acupuncture therapy resulted in a significant improvement in the clinical effective rate, with indications pointing to a relative increase in the chances of treatment success. Notable improvements were also seen in facial nerve function. The benefits extended to a marked reduction in cure time. Conversely, some measurements like the non-cure rate at 1-month follow-up did not show statistically significant improvements. Furthermore, the certainty of the evidence, as measured by the GRADE criteria, was found to be low for most outcomes examined.
